Freedom Four

A Friday Hodgepodge

1. "The Foreign-Born Heroes Who Chose America," by Agustina Vergara Cid (The Orange County Register):

Lafayette chose to fight for America after he became enamored with the cause for independence. In 1778, he wrote: "The moment I heard of America I loved her; the moment I knew she was fighting for freedom I burnt with a desire of bleeding for her; and the moment I shall be able to serve her, at any time, or in any part of the world, will be the happiest of my life." He wasn't the only foreigner who felt this profound reverence for this country even though he didn't have any prior connection to it.

950 words/3 minutes

2. "Why the Missing Outrage Over (Domestic) Terrorism?," by Ben Bayer (The Orange County Register):

Could it be that there's less outrage towards terrorism directed against businesspeople, because the dominant moral dogma of our culture still sees profit-driven activity as less than noble? I for one reject that dogma. They are innocent victims of terrorism. Not only that: contrary to the Marxist smear of "exploiters," their productivity, industriousness and ingenuity create valuable products and services we choose to buy.

1250 words/4 minutes

3. "The Real Climate Crisis," (video) by Alex Epstein (Prager U):

But while climate change -- humans impacting climate -- is a real thing, "climate crisis" is not. The world is slowly becoming warmer -- at a cold point in geological history when many more people die of cold than of heat. This doesn't at all justify rapidly restricting global fossil fuel use. Fossil fuels actually make us far safer from the climate by providing low-cost energy for the amazing machines that protect us against storms, protect us against extreme temperatures, and alleviate drought. Climate disaster deaths have decreased 98% over the last century. The only rational approach to reducing fossil fuels' climate impacts is a long-term one based on developing truly competitive, reliable forms of energy -- most promisingly, nuclear energy. Unfortunately, instead of taking this rational approach, governments declared a "climate crisis" and started immediately restricting fossil fuels -- with no viable replacement. They pretended that solar and wind could somehow replace fossil fuels. But since these fuels are inherently unreliable -- they can go to near-zero at any given time -- there was never any reason to believe this.

800 word transcript/5 minute video

4. "Drug Patents Do Not Cause High Drug Prices," (Introduction) by Adam Mossoff (white paper (PDF) from the Center for the Protection of Intellectual Property):

In sum, the claim that drug patents cause high drug prices is ubiquitous in the drug price policy debates, but this ubiquity does not correlate with reliable data or proven harms that make it true. This white paper first describes how property rights in inventions (patents) are a key factor in innovation and economic growth, especially in spurring innovations in new drugs and other healthcare treatments to the benefit of all patients. Thus, the evidentiary burden rests on activists and academics who propose systemic "reforms" that restrict patent rights for drug innovators and impose additional costs on all healthcare innovators. Second, it reviews USPTO and FDA data and summarizes numerous empirical studies that consistently contradict allegations by I-MAK and other activists of patent thickets and evergreening by drug innovators. Dug innovators in fact have far less than the 20-year exclusive right secured to inventors by the Patent Act. Third, it explains how systemic changes to the patent system only for drug innovators violates the principle of technology neutrality that has been an essential feature of the U.S. patent system as a successful property rights regime in incentivizing the creation and distributing of new drugs in the healthcare market to the benefit of patients.

800 words/3 minutes

-- CAV

Healthy Alternatives to 'Keeping the Peace'

A female grad student in history asked Captain Awkward about alternatives to suffering the condescending behavior of her mother's new partner some time back.

As Captain Awkward notes, the thinking she did and the advice she came up with apply to many situations, and I think are worth considering for people who find themselves stuck -- usually at work or with relatives -- dealing with people they'd ordinarily not have anything to do with.

One strategy I found particularly intriguing was the following, which I like because it hacks whatever value orientation such people might have:

2) Find three "safe" topics.

In a weird way, A. might be trying to engage with you (he thinks) positively by showing interest in stuff you like, like history. He's also a walking bag of insecurities who has to be the smartest & the best at everything, so there is no way this will go well. And he has the unfortunate "arguing until the other person is visibly upset is a form of fun!" chip installed. It's bad.

I suggest that you find three safe topics to talk about with A.

Topic 1: One where he is the expert or something he is passionate about, like, international business travel or being an old, somewhat privileged dude. Grilling. Fine wine. Sports. What you want is something that is of passing interest to you but you're not the expert or especially emotionally invested, but it is really interesting to him. And then you ask questions and let him talk.

True story, I once did tech support for a company. There was this older gentleman who was The Guy For Whom Everything Does Not Work As It Should. It was mostly not his fault, just, he had a bad track record of getting broken/shitty equipment or having stuff go wrong. And I was a girl learning the job as I went because it was a temp job & I was filling in for someone, and everything was somehow all my fault and all of our interactions were very negative.

I noticed once that he wore a Cleveland Indians (yes, the team name is racist) polo shirt, and that happened to be on a day where I had glimpsed the front page of the sports section (rare), so I was able to sort of say something like "Great win for the Indians ... last night, huh?" in an attempt at pleasant small talk. And he lit up and told me about the Indians ... the entire time I fixed his computer. After that, every time I went to see him, I would check and see how the Indians ... were doing first. Note: I did not pretend to know anything or care about or be a fan of the team. I never said anything beyond "Looks like it was a rough night!" or "What does this mean for the playoffs?" and let him do the rest.

Not only did he decide I was his new best bro-girl, after I left the job he tracked down my info through my temp agency and sent me a "Good luck, if you ever need a reference or a job lead, just call!" greeting card. I know a lot of people genuinely love, live & breathe sports, but until I met that dude I did not realize that even for people who aren't that into them, sports serve as a magically safe current events topic that anyone can opine on. Epiphany! "How 'bout them Cowboys?"

The other two suggestions for safe topics share the essential characteristic of being things the difficult person cares about, but which will not lead straight into a conversation you'd rather not have with said person.

The remaining strategies will be helpful in that they involve finding ways to spend less time around the difficult person and give oneself psychological space by, for example, being more assertive over time or simply being honest with oneself about disliking the difficult person.

-- CAV

Bureaucrats vs. Need

Fellow fans and students of Ayn Rand might recall the following quote from Francisco d'Anconia's Atlas Shrugged speech about money:

[W]hen you see that in order to produce, you need to obtain permission from men who produce nothing ... you may know that your society is doomed. (p. 385)

One might also recall this conclusion seeming plain as day, for which one can thank Ayn Rand's masterful building of context, by weaving together concrete examples together with philosophical argument.

Taken in isolation, such a statment might make little sense, and certainly would have little intellectual purchase with a reader from a culture saturated with altruism -- the idea that one man's need is a moral claim on another's effort; and collectivism -- the belief that the basic unit of a society is not the individual, but some larger collective to which each individual belongs.

That said, the state government of Louisiana has provided us with a real-life example of what that quote means on a personal level that one is unlikely to forget.

In fact, it's such a good example, I'm torn between looking for where Ayn Rand anticipated it and wondering if she would have left it out for fear of her novel being dismissed as a farce.

[I]n many states, if you want to start a business, you first must convince bureaucrats that your business is "needed."

Four years ago, Louisiana blocked social worker Ursula Newell-Davis from helping kids with special needs. Bureaucrats said she hadn't proved her business was needed.

"Why does the state of Louisiana have the right to stop me from doing what I love?" she asks... [bold added]

It is incredible that anyone would have to explain -- to the satisfaction of someone other than a potential customer -- that what one wants to do for a livelihood is "needed." (And it's doubly so for someone with a good track record of earning money and praise from past clients in that field.)

My incredulity is matched only by my relief to hear from the rest of John Stossel's report that the ridiculous law behind this is being challenged in court by the good people at the Pacific Legal Foundation.

-- CAV

Has Trump Created a Monster?

From Politico comes a story about one of the kook factions that Trump successfully pandered to to win the Presidency a second time.

The so-called Make America Healthy Again "movement" (MAHA) -- a collection of environmentalist-adjacent Luddites who oppose such boons to human flourishing as vaccination, modern fertilizers, and pesticides -- has become impatient because they feel Trump hasn't handed them enough favors. Some of them are now threatening to withdraw their support for him in the mid-terms.

This comes, predictably, with Republican officials protesting that they've done more for MAHA than the Democrats ever did:

"We thought we were getting a different administration that wanted to stand up to special interests, stand up to the pharmaceutical industry, stand up to the food companies, stand up to Big Ag, Big Chem. And that is not what we got. What we have right now is business as usual," said Vani Hari, a leader in the MAHA movement known as Food Babe who rose to prominence through her fight against chemicals in food.

"We're going to vote for whatever candidate puts the health of our children first," Hari said. "I don't have loyalty to anybody. And a lot of people feel that way within the MAHA movement."

This reminds me of a couple of things, the first being how conservatives -- seemingly until yesterday -- once correctly ridiculed such people as the lunatics they are.

Second, it reminds me of how effective voter blocs work in a two-party system: By being up for grabs, thereby making both parties responsive to their agenda.

Whether accurate or not, the perception that Trump needed MAHA to win in 2024, which he reinforced by handing Bobby Kennedy a cabinet post, is now part of the conventional wisdom. Based on the Republicans' past, sorry history of appeasing the Democrats on everything else, it's a safe bet that this will continue indefinitely along this new frontier. And the taste of political power Trump handed MAHA will have emboldened them and made them not content with being taken for granted by either party.

In an age where neither party qualifies as a champion of science -- with Democrat misuse of science to pretend their political aims are legitimate making Republican rejection of science seem less bad than it is -- Trump may well have made this army of crackpots into a political force that can press for horrible government science policy for decades to come.

-- CAV

At Least Steyer Had to Pay

At Reason, John Stossel recounts leftist billionaire Tom Steyer's despicable vendetta against scientist Roger Pielke, whom Steyer ultimately hounded out of a position he held at the University of Colorado for over 24 years.

"My views are entirely mainstream," says Pielke. "My work is cited by all three working groups of the IPCC. There's nothing contrarian."

Both Steyer and Pielke agree that "greenhouse gases warm the climate," but Pielke's sin was saying, "it's not the apocalypse."

Because of that, "the Center for American Progress decided to make me a target," he says.

...

Pielke didn't know who funded the smears until WikiLeaks revealed an email to Steyer from ThinkProgress' editor: "Thanks for your support of this work ... it's fair to say, without Climate Progress, Pielke would still be writing on climate change."

Think about that.

"Progressive" activists are proud to stop a researcher from writing about what he knows.

Notably, Pielke was also attacked by the Obama White House itself, in a 3,000 word memo.

This should disturb anyone concerned about academic freedom, but conservatives have no business being smug now that we have a Republican President.

As I noted last week, the Trump Administration wants to subordinate all federal research grants to the whims of bureaucrats both before granting (with peer review becoming merely "advisory") and after (with grants being subject to cancellation at any time and at the whims of bureaucrats).

Rather than freeing scientists like Pielke even a little bit from political pressure, that measure will present them with the choice of forgoing all such money -- or parroting the line of the party in charge. It is not hard to see how much cheaper and easier it will be for busybodies like Steyer to manipulate "the science" to fit their preconceived narrative if the party they favor happens to be in charge. It is also all but impossible to imagine federal research money being well-spent going forward after the proposed changes.

As Stossel notes at the end of his piece, Steyer has a real chance of becoming California's next governor, thereby becoming a credible future presidential candidate. Imagine the damage he would be able to do -- now for free! -- to the career of any scientist whose findings or analysis he doesn't care to hear.

-- CAV

Four Neat Things

A Friday Hodgepodge

1. A man describes his "two-part desk setup, with his long desk having digital and analog sides.

This is an interesting idea, and he claims to be able to shift contexts simply by sliding his chair between the sides.

This may not be for everyone, but it might be worth a look, if you are unhappy with your current setup and want ideas for improving it.

2. I don't edit video often, but when I do, I use ffmpeg, which is cross-platform and a veritable Swiss army knife.

It's nice to know that, should I need to do this on a computer I don't own or control, there is an in-browser implementation of ffmpeg here.

It claims to work on files locally, but its file loader looks like an upload icon, so if that's a concern, dig around a bit before using.

As a bonus -- and despite its name of ffmpeg CLI -- many common actions are iconified on the page.

3. While I am not upset that Google is making its searches more AI-centric, I don't always want to search that way, and I am not alone.

Tech Crunch recently reviewed six solid alternatives to Google.

In addition to DuckDuckGo, which I expected to see on the list, other choices variously offer such features as better privacy and customized means of limiting searches, such as putting out results for news from the left or news from the right.

4. Funny Comment of the Week: From a discussion about colonizing Venus: "At this point we're so deep into the science fiction that it might be easier to just hop into a time machine and colonize Mars before its atmosphere boiled off."

-- CAV

'Captain Boredom' to the Rescue Again!

A recent letter to Miss Manners yielded a couple of answers that fell within the bounds of etiquette, the preferred answer helping me see a new advantage of a strategy for dealing with difficult people I have discussed before. (That strategy is usually called "gray rock.")

The letter writer poses a question that comes with the complication that the difficult person is a neighbor. Thus, while a blunt affirmative might be an appropriate answer to Have I done something to offend you?, the writer seems to want an answer that better reduces future engagement with someone who won't be going away any time soon.

Miss Manners replies:

What you want is a way to make her leave you alone, which can be accomplished with your best look of deep concern and the return question of, "What ever would make you say that?" Then appear not to be paying too much attention when she answers, in the hope that she will review her own actions.

This is classic gray rock, and I agree with some of the commenters that someone as rude as that neighbor was would be unlikely to reflect on her actions.

That said, as someone who is more likely to just want to be done, I failed to appreciate an advantage that another commenter noted of the response:

MM's answer does not give the neighbor anything to manipulate the LW with. It does not give her an opening for excuses, or arguments, or lectures. It provides nothing juicy to gossip about, nothing to use to smear the LW to their mutual acquaintances, nothing to start a feud about.

It presents a wall of indifference with no explanation - a smooth surface which can't be climbed or broken through. Eventually the neighbor will retreat in puzzlement, with nothing to accuse the LW of except vague things like "she's cold" or "she's not a good neighbor".

The LW lives in this neighborhood, she does not want to make actual enemies, she just wants to disengage from the neighbor. [bold added]

This response is similar to what I'd do naturally, but after seeing the more blunt reply, I saw it as a bit of a toss-up, in part because I don't think about gossip very much.

That said, the situation that ultimately caused the letter-writer to inquire never would have happened to me. I would have had no trouble stopping the initial boundary violation at all, because things like that raise my hackles too much.

I nevertheless am grateful to have learned of another of Captain Boredom's superpowers.

-- CAV